CHAPTER 5- SELLING RAW STONE

Domestic violence was about to happen, and all the members in the house including Song Yuan Zhi treat this daily occurrence as entertainment, waiting for the amusing scene where Song Ye will get beaten up badly and still had to clean the dishes with a crying face afterwards.

With eyes that showed cruelty, Lu Lan raised up the broom in her hand and swung it hard towards Song Ye. Just then, a cold, small hand grabbed onto it and stopped the momentum of the broom.

The air frozed up and the surrounding turned silent. All the Song family members widened their eyes in disbelief as they stared at Song Ye.

She really blocked the swing.

"I am not as weak and easy to bully as I appear to be. I'm only considering the ties that we share as a family. If you think that you and I don't have any familial bond to speak of, you don't need to chase me away, I will walk out by myself."

Song Ye sounded calm and unperturbed, but her words had made everyone panicked internally.

Lu Lan's expression changed rapidly, she was unable to release the anger in her chest as she saw the calm and cold eyes of Song Ye.

When she reached the entrance, a loud pang could be heard when Song Yuan Zhi stood up from the sofa and roared at Song Ye.

"Who do you think you are, huh? Don't you dare come back later, if you were to die, just die and rot outside!"

Even though she was quite some distance away from them, Song Ye can still hear him cursing at the entrance.

Standing between the doorway, Song Ye curved her lips and let out a cold smile.

Song Yuan Zhi did not treat himself as someone high above and took any action against her, reservedly, he was the one in the Song family that couldn't stand the existence of Song Ye the most. He did not even bat an eye when witnessing Lu Lan abuse towards her. Now that the Song Ye that used to be the punching bag is not behaving as she should be, he was so angry that his lungs were about to burst.

After so many years, Song Ye had lost every hope she had for the family. The Song family in her eyes now, are not any different from strangers.

The things that she wanted to do currently was fill up both her stomach and her pockets.

In such a remote and rural town, finding a high-end accessory shop had proven to be difficult, not to mention raw stone markets; but from what she remembered, there was a jewellery shop near her school that was located in the city nearby.

The distance between the town and her school were few tens of kilometers. Usually, the kids of other households in the town rode public transportation in order to reach the school. Lu Lan however, had harshly let Song Ye walked to school everyday in the name of exercising. But in actuality, she just wanted to save the cost.

The Song Ye now was currently penniless, so she had to walk for three hours straight with an empty stomach. When she reached the city, her face had already gone pale and she was only holding out with shear willpower alone so that she wouldn't collapse.

When she found the jewellery shop from her memory, it was already closed for the day. It was currently dusk, thus the shop had closed up long ago.

Looking at the dark sky, Song Ye was unable to walk anymore, so she curled herself up and took a rest beside the shop. Fidgeting with the raw stone in her hand, she heaved a sigh. The road after being reborn was not easy to walk on at all.

When she was deep in her thoughts, a black car was headed towards her and stopped in front of her. A man's face could be seen when the window rolled down.

"Little miss, what are you doing in front of my shop?"

Song Ye blanked out. When she raised her head and saw the man with a gentle face, she hurriedly stood up and walked up to the car. She held up the raw stone and spoke softly.

"I want to sell this jade raw stone. My family is in a difficult situation and we only have this stone left."

A little girl that came out to sell the raw stone by herself, no matter how one thought about it, it would make her look suspicious, so Song Ye had came up with a reason. Accompanied by her pale complexion, it did make one feel like her family was in poverty and had no other choice.

The man did not mind much about it, but when he saw the raw stone in her small hands, his eyes slightly shimmered. He came out of the car and conversed with Song Ye.

"Little miss, did your family ask you to sell this?"

"Yes, my father and mother asked me to bring this out to sell. They said that if you extract the contents inside, it could be sold for some money."

Song Ye pretended to not know what was up and timidly protected the raw stone in her hand while she replied to the man.

The man did not think much about it and headed to open his shop up and invited Song Ye to enter.

"I'm called Zhao Zhen. If you don't mind, you can just call me uncle. It is a very valuable item, so hold onto it properly. I'll go and get the machines prepared so that the raw stone can be extracted later."

"Hello, Uncle Zhao. I'm Song Ye."

Song Ye had also introduced herself and sat herself on the chair waiting. During this time, Zhao Zhen had prepared some snacks and tea for her.

"Eat it if you feel hungry. The process for extracting the raw stone will take some time."

Without looking down or discriminating against Song Ye that had tattered clothes on her, the caring action of Zhao Zhen had allowed Song Ye to have an initial deduction in regards to his personality.

Of course, the final conclusion depends on his reaction after he extracted the raw stone.

Zhao Zhen, with a formal suit on him, sat in front of the machine and processed everything by himself. He carefully removed the rough and black surface. One can see how careful and detailed he was as he spent twenty minutes just to scrape off a small part of the palm-sized raw stone.

Zhao Zhen's jewellery shop was not really that famous in Yun Cheng. The lesser the shop was known by the mass, the harder it was for them to obtain good resources; not to mention it was hard for the shop to compete against the larger jewellery shops due to the shop's tight budget. The reason that this shop was still in operation despite all those was due to its reputation.

He had considered changing his occupation a lot of times, but whenever he faced the jades, he felt a strong adoration and desire to research them. Just like how even though the raw stone in his hands now did not seem to be of good quality, he still treated the raw stone with utmost care.

But the next moment when he saw the green hue that appeared from underneath the surface of the raw stone, he was so shocked that he couldn't even utter a word at all.

"What happened, Uncle Zhao?"

Song Ye asked him with an inquisitive look while she was sitting nearby.

A moment later, Zhao Zhen widened his eyes and let out a smile, with an excited tone he said,

"It's green, there's a green hue! And the transparency level is high as well."

Not caring if Song Ye understood those jargon, he immediately wiped his sweat with his handkerchief after he finished his sentence. Carefully rubbing the raw stone, he rubbed until the whole jade appear before him. The transparency and the reflection of the jade was so beautiful that it was hard for someone to move their eyes away from it.

Even for Song Ye whose not an expert in this field, was also be able to determine that it was very expensive and valuable.

She sat beside him and said nothing until Zhao Zhen had done researching it and calmed himself down. He initiated a conversation with Song Ye.

"Xiao Ye, did your family mention how much they wanted to sell this for?"

Song Ye shook her head, "Father and mother did not mention, they only said we needed some money to be able to go through another day. I don't understand or know about it myself, so why don't you set the price, Uncle Zhao?"

This sentence was a slight indication of Song Ye acting naive. No matter how little knowledge she had in this field, she was still not that much of an idiot to allow the other party to set the price. The reason she did it was to test the other party out.

Zhao Zhen was taken aback for a second. He smiled while he held onto the item.

"This is a glass type emerald with high density, so it is priceless. But the size is a little small, not to mention this shop of mine is also quite small, so I am unable to take out that much money. Will it be okay if I pay you thirty thousand for this emerald?"

When he said this, Zhao Zhen felt a little guilty. Because this was a glass type apple green jade with high density, even if the size is smaller than the current one, it will still cost around seventy to eighty thousand; but he did not have that much money in his hand.

Seeing how he avoided her eyesight, Song Ye knew that he felt guilty. Observing his attitude and behavior, she judged that he could be someone useful to her. She stood up and walked towards Zhao Zhen.

"Okay, thirty thousand it is. But I would also like to include the share of this jewellery shop into our transaction."